Editorial | Mitch McConnell misfires with gun rhetoric

Jan. 23, 2013

The claims sound paranoid. They prey on unfounded fears. They evoke the darkest moments of McCarthyism when U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s roiled the government and the nation with baseless allegations of communist infiltration.

Yet that’s what’s coming out of the re-election campaign of Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, who flooded the state Saturday with a robocall ripping President Barack Obama’s proposal to place reasonable limits on firearms following the slaughter of 20 children and six adults in a school shooting in Connecticut.

Consider this excerpt from the taped call Mr. McConnell placed to constituents on “Guns Across America” day, where gun rights activists held rallies in Kentucky and other states:

“President Obama and his team are doing everything in their power to restrict your constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Mr. McConnell declared firmly.

That was followed by an even more outrageous email blast to supporters from his campaign manager, Jesse Benton, entitled “Watch out, they’re coming for your guns.”

“You and I are literally surrounded,” said the email with the salutation that begins “Dear Patriot.” (That’s tea party lingo for the tea party crowd that doesn’t like Mr. McConnell very much — more about that later.)

“The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out assault on the Second Amendment,” the email continues. “On your rights. On your freedom.”

President Obama, it warns, has issued executive orders “he will take to get your guns.”

The President’s goals include “full-scale confiscation!” it bleats. “The gun-grabbers are in full battle mode. And they are serious.”

But relax, Kentucky gun owners. There is one person who can save you.

“Know that I will be doing everything in my power as Senate Republican leader, fighting tooth and nail, to protect your Second Amendment rights so that law-abiding citizens such as yourself can properly and adequately protect yourself, your family and your country,” Mr. McConnell says in the robocall.

Mr. McConnell isn’t doing so well these days. He failed in his goal of Mr. Obama’s first term — to block the President’s re-election. Despite his groveling, he can’t get any love from the Kentucky tea party, which is threatening to run a primary opponent against him in 2014 when Mr. McConnell, 70, will seek his sixth term in the U.S. Senate.

So now, on the firearms topic, he has resorted to what was known in the McCarthy era as the “Big Lie” — say it often enough and people believe it. Let’s hope the people of Kentucky don’t.